In bloom this week: June 13, 2016

Hollyhocks

I missed a couple of weeks, was out of town and things got a little hectic when I returned. My garden continued to bloom without me, and surprisingly, the weeds haven't overgrown everything (yet?).

All of my lavender is blooming, in my rose garden and on the sunnier side of my shade garden - along with peas, yum!

Lavender and peas

Fern leaf lavender

White lavender

Hollyhocks are growing just behind the peas (on the sunnier side of the shade garden), and in the back of my vegetable garden.

Hollyhocks in the vegetable garden

In my vegetable garden, I'm letting a few onions go to seed. I doubt that's going to result in large onions, but I wanted to see what they would look like.

Onion blooms

Also in my vegetable garden (which perhaps needs to be renamed), more lupine and delphiniums are blooming.

Lupine

Delphinium

Here's one actual vegetable in flower - bush beans!

Bush beans

On the sunny hillside, salvia 'hot lips' blooms have turned from mostly red to mostly white. Harebell (campanula rotundifolia) and yarrow are also blooming.

Hot lips salvia

Hot lips salvia

Harebell

Yarrow

When I was digging up that part of the hillside earlier in the spring, I scattered wildflower and various poppy seeds in a strip across the bottom. Even a month ago, I was afraid not much was going to come up. Now, everything has taken off!

Wildflowers

Wildflowers, many colors of California poppies

Wildflowers, bachelor's button?

In my tiny native meadow area at the bottom of the hill, brodiaea coronaria, which was an accidental purchase, has lovely blooms.

Brodiaea coronaria

Of course the roses continue to bloom and I just deadheaded a lot of them so will have many more soon.

The new groundcover plants in the rose garden are growing slowly but steadily.

Heron's Bill

Yarrow

Creeping Bellflower - just planted this month

Catmint

That's more pictures than I thought I had! What will bloom next? Lots of shasta daisies!

Daisies

Progress on the hillside, part 3

I'm long overdue for a progress update about the sunny hillside. Since my last update, I dug out and planted the middle section between the blueberries and new raspberries. Again, the cardboard worked very well at killing the grass, I dug it out only because there was old landscape fabric underneath that I needed to get rid of.

First, the area right above the blueberries, where I started a rock stream.

Plants:

• Bear grass - Xerophyllum tenax 
• Penstemon davidsonii 
• Harebell - Campanula rotundifolia 
• Sedum spathulifolium
• Thrift - armeria aliacea 'Dusseldorf Pride', and armeria meritima

Then the lower part of the rock stream.

Plants:

• Oregon stone crop - sedum oreganum
• Lewisia 'Regenbogen'
• Lewisia columbiana 'Rupicola' - added after the above picture, I bought one plant and divided into five
• Roemer's fescue - Festuca idahoensis subsp. Roemeri
• Thrift - armeria aliacea 'Dusseldorf Pride' 

And finally, the rest of the middle.

Plants:

• Salvia, 'Hot Lips'
• Penstemon, two 'Rocky Mountain' and one unknown variety
• Lupine - lupinus, 'My Castle'
• Kinnikinnick, 'Vancouver Jade'
• Wild strawberries, transplanted from nearby

The plants along the rock stream are all native, those in the middle are "near" native - there are varieties that are native, but not easy to find. The one exception is the hot lips salvia, which I couldn't resist. They are all drought resistant, once established. I have a drip line on the blueberries and will add one for the raspberries, but I don't plan to regularly water anything else on this hillside.

Everything is growing well so far, including a few weeds - time to weed and mulch!

Sedum and thrift

Hot lips salvia

Penstemon

Lewisia

Wild strawberries spreading near the raspberries

I had planted a few packets of wildflower seeds and poppy seeds along the strip at the bottom of the hillside and was disappointed that only a few were coming up. Suddenly, they've all sprung up and getting ready to bloom.

There is still a section of cardboard at the top of the hill, which is probably next on my list. I have a few stepping stones, matching those going up the hill, to create a pathway across the top. The grape trellis at the top is a problem though, it's going to block the path until we get it reconfigured - maybe in the fall. 

I also just started a new experiment with two large sections of clear plastic - more about that soon!

In bloom this week: May 24, 2016

Peas!

Peas are growing spectacularly well this year, I can't wait to eat them all.

The foxglove and geraniums that are nearby in my shade garden are lovely too, plus lavender on the sunnier edge.

Foxglove and geranium

Lavender

My flowers that are taking over the vegetable garden are fading now, the iris is done and oriental poppies and lupine are finishing up. I cut the remains of the first blooms off of these aquilegia when I planted them and now they're blooming again - a good super sale purchase.

Oriental poppy

Lupine

Aquilegia

I did some deadheading in the roses this afternoon and was surprised at how many are just starting to have full blooms. There are a few that bloom early and are done with their first blooms, but now is the peak for many others.

More lavender in the rose garden, white and Munstead; these are tiny little plants still.

On the sunny hillside, all of my new plants are settling in well. Two of the penstemon are blooming, nice shades of purple to go with the red and white salvia. I still need to write up info about everything that I've planted on this hill!

Penstemon

Penstemon

Hot lips salvia

At the top of my rock stream, yarrow is blooming along with thrift and sedum. At the bottom, one lewisia keeps on blooming, happy to be out of the very crowded nursery pot.

Yarrow, thrift and sedum (plus low hanging blueberries)

Sedum and thrift

Lewisia blooms mixing in with lupine leaves

I also have a few aquilegia towards the shadier side of the hill, they've been cheerfully blooming all spring. I don't know why I never tried to grow aquilegia before, they have great flowers in so many varieties.

At the bottom of the hill - blue eyed grass is another of my new favorites, why did I not know that this plant existed?

A couple of random flowers from a wildflower mix. Not a whole lot came up, but there are now a few flowers and it was a temporary plan anyway.

By next week, this fireweed may start to open up. They grow from seed every year at the very bottom of my rose garden and bloom for most of the summer.